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ELECTIONS IN THE SOUTH. 


SPEECH 


OF 


J 


HON. C. L. BARTLETT. 


OF GEORGIA, 



IN THE 


HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 


Friday, February 2, 1900. 




WASHINGTON. 

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Cong. Record Off*] 
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SPEECH 


OF 

HON. C. L. BARTLETT, 


The House being in Committee of the Whole House on the state of the 
Union, and having under consideration the Indian appropriation bill— 

Mr. BARTLETT said: 

Mr. Chairman: I undertook the day before yesterday to get an 
opportunity to answer some remarks of the gentleman from North 
Carolina [Mr. Linney] with reference to my own State, and I 
intended on yesterday to do so, but I was not able to be present. 

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from North Carolina has so estab¬ 
lished himself as the harlequin of this House that it is not neces¬ 
sary for me, where he is known or where his peculiar character¬ 
istics are known, to refute any suggestion he might make with 
reference to my own Stae. The other States that he arraigned 
as guilty of gross violations of the law because of election methods 
and election laws that exist there may take care of themselves, 
and are able to do so. His own State, which he maligns on the 
floor of this House, is ably represented and can take care of herself. 
The State of Mississippi has already taken care of the assaults 
made upon it, and the gentleman has been answered most fully. 

But, Mr. Chairman, when the gentleman undertakes to call atten¬ 
tion here to the fact that there have been unfortunate violations 
of the law in my own State, and undertakes to give as the reason 
for them that it is because of what he denounces as wrongful and 
outrageous election laws and election methods existing in Geor¬ 
gia, the gentleman, as usual, speaks without knowledge of the facts 
and makes statements that the facts do not warrant or bear out. 

Now as to the law of Georgia, Mr. Chairman. Since Georgia got 

control of her own affairs in 1872, when a governor guilty of 

wrong and fraud upon the State fled between two suns and turned 

the government of the State over to her own people and to her 

own sons, no man has been able to truly charge upon her people a 
4587 3 



4 


law which was wrong as to elections or to charge us with fraud 
at the ballot box. I challenge the gentleman from North Caro¬ 
lina in this House, since he has been a member, to point to a case 
that is sustained by the least proof or a particle of evidence that 
will refute what I have stated. 

The gentleman who charges Georgia with being guilty of viola¬ 
tions of law and who attributes the small vote cast in the last elec¬ 
tion to vicious election laws, which he denounces now as a mem¬ 
ber of this House, w T as a member of Elections Committee No. 1, 
which heard two cases of a contested election from the State of 
Georgia in the Fifty-fourth Congress. He heard the evidence and 
he heard the arguments; and after hearing it all he, partisan as he 
is, giving the utmost weight to every suggestion, to every suspi¬ 
cion, and to every indication that might point to fraud or wrong 
in elections, in order to turn Democratic members out of the 
House, with reason if he could, and without reason if he must, 
knew at the time that he made the statement with reference to the 
laws of Georgia that both of these cases had been heard in the 
committee room and that he signed his name to both reports, in 
which he concurred with every other member of that committee 
and declared that there was no suspicion of fraud in either. 

And with this knowledge, Mr. Chairman, he had the effrontery 
to disregard the truth and make a statement that assaulted the 
election laws of Georgia and attempted to allege that unfortunate 
circumstances and crime that existed there in the past year—that 
lynchings that have unfortunately, occurred, and not only have 
occurred in Georgia, but everywhere in the United States from 
New York to California, w T herever the cause has existed—I say, 
when he made that statement, he knew the facts did not author¬ 
ize him or sustain him in the allegation. 

Mr. Chairman, no one knows better than the gentleman who now 
occupies the chair that these allegations are unfounded, because 
he was a member of the committee that investigated these cases, 
and as a fair and honest man, together with every other member 
of that committee, knows that the election laws of Georgia were 
fair and honest and that any complaints made against them for 
twenty years past were unfounded. 

Mr. Chairman, w T e have a constitutional provision which pro- 
4567 







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vides the qualifications for voters, one of which provides that 
there shall he paid a capitation tax in order to qualify people to 
vote. Are we peculiar in that? I hold in my hand the law of 
Rhode Island, which not only imposes the tax, hut makes it a 
crime not to pay it; and the supreme court of Rhode Island, no 
longer ago than November 27, 1899, declared to the legislature, 
when inquired about it, if such a law as that were constitutional, 
that it not only did not violate the Constitution of the United 
States, but it did not violate the constitution of Rhode Island. So 
the poor white voter in Rhode Island must not only pay his poll 
tax in order to vote; but if he does not pay it, he must go to jail. 
And yet the gentleman from North Carolina, with his great wis¬ 
dom, with his great knowledge that he parades before the House, 
arraigns the State of Georgia and other States in this Union that 
lie south of the Potomac River for fraudulent election laws and 
fraudulent ballot-box methods. 

Lawyer that he is, the walking encyclopedia that he claims to 
be, this Solomon that half knows everything, Mr. Chairman, did 
not call attention to a single election law or to a single case except 
in his own State. This apostate to the teaching and doctrines of 
his own people was satisfied, in order to accomplish his own pur¬ 
pose of reelection, or hope of election, not only to denounce his 
own people, but to denounce every other State of the South. 

Why, Mr. Chairman, your own State is the advance agent in the 
laws that protect the ballot box and the intelligent people in the 
right to cast the ballot. 

She set the first example in her Australian ballot law\ She has 
required an educational qualification. So does Connecticut and 
various other States. Georgia has not yet advanced that far. She 
may or may not do so. But I tell you, sir, that when it comes to the 
laws of election and the holding of elections, the election laws of 
Georgia are just as fair and the holding and certification of the 
results just as true and honest as in the State of Massachusetts, 
whose honesty in respect to matters of election has not been ques¬ 
tioned. Sir, I do not desire to criticise any one harshly, but they 
are in the State of Pennsylvania engaged in trying a few ballot- 
box staffers, many others having fled the realm in order to escape 

punishment. 

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Now, Mr. Chairman, let me tell you what happened in Georgia 
on the 22d of December, 1899. There were but two Republican 
members in the house out of 175. With those exceptions, every 
man was a Democrat; and every man was a white man. Every 
man owed his place in that house to the nomination and the votes 
of the white Democracy of Georgia. No, sir, not altogether; for 
there were some in that house who owed their election as nomi¬ 
nees of the Democratic party to the votes of colored people, who 
voted for them in preference to the Populist candidate. 

There was introduced in that house a constitutional amendment 
copied after the provision of Louisiana and North Carolina. That 
proposition was fully debated; and on the roll call (two-thirds be¬ 
ing required in order to pass it) there appeared in the house of 
representatives of the State of Georgia only three men voting to 
put upon the statute books of the State of Georgia a provision 
which would disfranchise the negro. That is public history. And 
on that day ministers of the gospel and other representative ne¬ 
groes in the city of Atlanta met together and offered up thanks to 
God for the action which their old masters and the sons of their 
old masters had taken. ‘ ‘ We owe it,” they said, “ to them and to 
nobody else that the right of the ballot which was given to us by 
the Constitution of the United States has not been taken away.” 

Mr. LACEY. Will the gentleman allow me a suggestion? 

Mr. BARTLETT. Oh, yes; I am always glad to yield to the 
gentleman. 

Mr. LACEY. I am very much gratified to learn of the action 
of the State of Georgia to which the gentleman from Georgia re¬ 
fers. Now, does he not believe that if North Carolina, Missis¬ 
sippi, and other Southern States would act as generously as Georgia 
has done there would be less trouble in those States? 

Mr. BARTLETT. Why not apply the question to Massachu¬ 
setts or Connecticut or Pennsylvania? 

Mr. LACEY. It is not a negro question there. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Ah, my friend, these various gentlemen 

must take care of their own States. For myself, Mr. Chairman, 

I want to say that in the State of Georgia we have got along with 

a ballot law which works no injustice to anybody. Those who 

pay the poll tax have the right to vote. And in the battles be- 
•1567 


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tween the Populists and the Democrats in our State one-half of 
our colored voters have aligned themselves with the Democrats. 

Yet the gentleman from North Carolina, with this fact of pub¬ 
lic history before him—it having been published in the newspa¬ 
pers of every metropolitan city in the country with conspicuous 
headlines that Georgia had refused to disfranchise the negro- 
stands on the floor of this House and denounces us as violators of 
the law, because, forsooth, we have, as he says, outrageous elec¬ 
tion laws. 

Now, I want to call the attention of this House to an incident 
which happened about three years ago. The governor of Georgia 
was stricken and was thought to be dying. His friends stood 
around watching with anxious hearts to determine whether he 
would live or die. He was carried from the executive mansion on 
a stretcher to a room where a surgical operation was to be per¬ 
formed upon him. His wife and children had bid him good-bye. 
The physicians held out no hope of his recovery. The great cold 
waters of the sea of eternity were splashing at his feet. He could 
almost hear the opening of the great beyond. His surgeons laid 
him bare upon the table; the surgeon’s knife glistened before the 
sufferer's eye. But at that moment he remembered that in the 
executive office there lay an application for the reprieve or pardon 
of a humble negro—a person poor and friendless—so much so that 
the court was obliged to appoint a lawyer to defend him. While 
lying there on the surgeon’s table the governor called out to his 
secretary, “Do not forget that negro” (naming him), and he 
named then a period of reprieve for that old negro; and when 
God had spared his life that reprieve went into effect, and the 
sentence of the negro was commuted to a life penalty instead of 
death. [Applause.] 

When that man was nominated again by the Democratic party, 
and was assailed by men who had formerly been Democrats when 
the banner of the Democratic party was in his hands, tliero 
marched to the polls all over that State men whose skins were 
black, led by men who went to the Republican convention for 
the last five to ten years to nominate a Republican candidate for 
President, men who were the trusted political friends of Presi¬ 
dent McKinley, white and black in Georgia, and cast their bal- 
4567 


8 


lots for the candidate of tlie Democratic party, because, Mr. 
Chairman, when it came to administering the law and meting out 
justice, the black man, without friend or help, received at the hands 
of the governor of Georgia consideration equal to that of any 
other man in the State. [Applause on the Democratic side.] 

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Georgia 
has expired. 

Mr. BARTLETT. I hope I may have ten minutes more. I beg 
the indulgence of the committee. 

Mr. GROSYENOR. I ask unanimous consent that the gentle- 

» 

man may have ten minutes. 

TheCHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Grosvenor] 
asks unanimous consent that the gentleman from Georgia may 
proceed for ten minutes. Is there objection? 

There was no objection. 

Mr. BARTLETT. I thank the House and I thank my friend 
from Ohio. 

Mr. GROSVENOR. If the gentleman will allow me, and it is 
not an interruption, I should like to say that this is a very inter¬ 
esting subject to me. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Yes.' 

Mr. GROSYENOR. I confess that I have been in the line of 
thought w T itli the gentleman, and that Georgia lias done wonders 
for the probable checking of wrong upon this question. Now, if 
it is consonant with the gentleman's ideas, will he explain why so 
small a vote is cast in Georgia? 

Mr. BARTLETT. I thank the gentleman for the suggestion. 
That was the purpose of my addressing the House. The gentle¬ 
man from North Carolina [Mr. Linney] undertook to give it as 
irrefutable evidence that the vote in Georgia was suppressed, and 
that our infamous election law, as he calls it, made the vote small, 
and that, therefore, people being roused to indignation because 
they could not vote, committed crimes, or people who could vote 
committed inexcusable and unnamable crimes, as he charged, upon 
people who could not vote. Gentlemen, I will tell you the reason 
for the small vote. 

I had the honor of aiding in enacting as a statute of Georgia 

what is known as the primary election law of that State, by which 
4567 



9 


the different parties hold primaries to nominate candidates. Every 
man of Georgia upon the floor of this House and every man who 
holds an office in Georgia by the election of the Democratic party 
does not receive that office as the nominee of any clique or county 
convention or court-house call. He receives that office as the 
choice of the majority of the Democratic party in its Democratic 
primaries, and every election held under the primary law is guarded 
by men who have to be appointed,and sworn, and it is made as 
much a crime to vote twice or to vote illegally or doing any wrong¬ 
ful act at a primary election in Georgia as to do the same thing 
at the subsequent regular election. 

Now, we have these primaries all over the State of Georgia to 
choose candidates from governor and Congressman down to jus¬ 
tices of the peace and bailiffs, and the contest is in the Democratic 
party between the candidates for office, who go out amongst the 
people, discuss the questions involved, and the voters come out in 
the primary election and cast their ballots; and when the nomi¬ 
nations are declared and the elections come in October or No¬ 
vember, in an off year or a Presidential year, if you please, the 
people being satisfied, there being no opposition in nine cases out 
of ten in the counties or in the Congressional districts of the State, 
in those districts where there is no opposition the people do not 
get out to vote. 

Pardon me for referring to my own case. Mr. Chairman, in 
1894 I was nominated by my people in the various primaries in 
my district. Nearly every vote was polled, there being three 
candidates for the nomination. Each one of the three got out his 
friends, and the ballot was full, honest, and square. 

Mr. LACEY. I should like to ask my friend one further ques¬ 
tion. How extensive was the colored vote in that primary? 

Mr. BARTLETT. Well, I will answer that question, speaking 

only for my own district. I could name the counties. In two 

counties in my district colored men who acknowledged that they 

were Democrats, or wanted to vote in the Democratic primary, 

and thereby declared their allegiance to the party and to support 

its nominees, did vote and were allowed to vote; and those we 

knew to be Democratic colored men, who not only supported 

us in the primary, but when the election came in 1894 and 189G, 
4567 


10 


with nobody but the Populist candidate running against us, they 
voted for me as the Democratic nominee. And I have a letter 
which I wish I had here, that I could read, from one of the white 
Republicans, amongst many in my district. He not only sup¬ 
ported me, but wrote to every county, and, though his business 
was a hundred miles away from the place where he was to vote, 
on the election day he left his business and came back to the poll¬ 
ing place, and said to me, as he walked to the polls, “I am here 
to vote for you, as I promised.” 

So, Mr. Chairman, when the elections came in my own district, 
the first time, having nobody but the Populist candidate against 
me, the negroes did not vote, or the vote was divided. The next 
time we had again the Populist candidate, a man who went out 
amongst the negroes and undertook to array them against the 
whites; but the representative colored men in my district, through 
their executive committee, through the men who go to the na¬ 
tional conventions, stumped that district for me with their colored 
friends and colored supporters and they voted for me. When 
1898 came I did not have any opposition, either in my own party, 
the Populist party, or the Republican party, and every vote in 
that district that was cast, amounting to but about 3,500, it is 
true, was cast for me except three. So I give my own case as an 
answer to the gentleman’s question. 

My people have honored me by giving me every office I have 
asked for since the day I was 24 years old. I have never sought 
anything at their hands without receiving it, and sometimes 
they have been generous enough to force upon me offices that I 
did not seek. 

They have honored me by giving me every office that I have 
applied for and some that I did not. 

I know the importance of a full vote. My own county possesses 
a Democratic white registered vote of 4,500. I sat down and 
wrote to every registered Democratic voter on that list and begged 
him to come out and cast his ballot, stating to him that the small¬ 
ness of our vote was a matter of criticism by the opposition. I 
sent a printed appeal with a ticket with my name upon it, beg¬ 
ging them to come out and vote. Out of a registered Democratic 

vote of 4,500 I received 1,000 votes. One thousand men only went 
4567 


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to the polls, not because they objected to me, but when I met 
them on the street and asked “ Why did not you vote?” the reply 
always was: “You have no opposition, and it is not necessary for 
me to vote.” 

When I did have opposition, Mr. Chairman, they closed their 
stores, they shut up their houses, they quit their business, and 
iiot a man went back until he had cast his ballot. When I did 
not have any opposition I could not by the most earnest appeals 
induce them to come out and vote. The reason the small vote is 
cast is because a nomination by a white Democratic primary set¬ 
tles the election in every district almost, and opposition has not 
existed except in rare instances by the Republicans and in some 
instances by the Populists, and wherever there is opposition by the 
Populists one-half of the negroes vote with the white Democrats. 

Mr. GROSVENOR. That, I suppose, would show that the 
colored vote is getting to be quite intelligent. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Wait a minute. 

Mr. GRIGGS. We educate them. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Here is something by the smartest and most 
intelligent negro I know. Here is a statement by Booker Wash¬ 
ington about the negro, and here is what he says about the gov¬ 
ernor of North Carolina. Let us see what he says: 

Is there any reason why the negro in the South should oppose the South¬ 
ern man in politics? Unconsciously we seem to have gotten the idea into our 
blood and bones that we are only acting in a manly way when we oppose 
Southern white men with our votes. * * * In some way, by some method, 
we must bring the race to the point where it will cease to feel that the only 
way for it to succeed is to oppose everything suggested or put forth by the 
Southern white men. * * * I believe there are thousands of white Demo¬ 
crats in North Carolina who are 50 per cent better friends to the negro than 
Governor Russell, and I see no necessity in continuing to follow Governor 
Russell, who has no power to protect, or if he has the power, does not exer¬ 
cise it, rather than these other white men who can protect us if we cease to 
continually and forever oppose them. 

[Applause.] 

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

Mr. BARTLETT. May I trespass a little more on the time of 
the committee? 

Mr. LITTLE. I hope that the gentleman may be allowed to 
proceed ten minutes longer. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Arkansas asks unani¬ 
mous consent that the time of the gentleman from Georgia be ex- 
4567 




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tended ten minutes. Is there objection? [After a pause.] The 
Chair hears none. 

Mr. BARTLETT. What I have said has been with reference to 
my own district. I prefer rather to speak of it than those of my 
colleagues, but it is the same with their districts as it was with 
mine. In the primary that we had, where there were candidates 
for all the county offices, I had 12,700 votes cast for me, and that 
was because there were candidates running for every office. 

Mr. HENRY C. SMITH. Will the gentleman yield to me for a 
question? 

Mr. BARTLETT. Certainly. 

Mr. HENRY C. SMITH. What was the population of your 
district? 

Mr. BARTLETT. One hundred and sixty-five thousand, I 
think. 

Mr. HENRY C. SMITH. Counting 1 vote to 5 of a family, there 
were 33,180 voters. 

Mr. BARTLETT. And 26,000 registered. 

Mr. HENRY C. SMITH. You received 3,008 votes. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Y T es, sir. 

Mr. HENRY C. SMITH. And there were three against you? 

Mr. BARTLETT. Yes, sir. 

Mr. HENRY C. SMITH. Do you know who they were? 
[Laughter.] 

Mr. BARTLETT. Yes. They were Prohibition Populists, ex¬ 
treme upon the subject of the sale of liquor and equally extreme 
on the subject of Populism in the South. [Laughter.] 

Mr. HENRY C. SMITH. And they are against you because you 
are not a Prohibitionist. [Renewed laughter.] 

Mr. BARTLETT. Now, Mr. Chairman, permit me to say in 
answer to some of these things that have been said with reference 
to lynchings in the South and in Georgia, I shall not refer to the 
conditions generally. I have taken pains to investigate the mat¬ 
ter, and I do not want to offend anybody; I do not want to be 
understood as criticising other States. God knows that I would 
repeat every day that grand prayer that we repeat from the prayer 
book every Sunday when we go to church: “From all envy and 

hatred and malice, good Lord deliver us;” and I would commend 
4567 


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it to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Linney], if he ever 
has an opportunity to enter the portals of a church, to ask forgive¬ 
ness for the wrong he has done his own country. [Applause.] 

Now, Mr. Chairman, here we are. In my own town of 40,000 
people there was a case where a poor, helpless white woman had 
been assaulted, not by a negro, but by a white man. He was ar¬ 
rested and put in jail, and in that community a public meeting 
was held, and nobody could stem their indignation; they broke 
the jail open and carried him out and lynched him. He was a 
white man. They might have done that thing, and doubtless 
would have done it, if his skin had been black. Lynchings not 
only occur in the South, but in the West, in the North, in New 
Jersey, in New York, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Michigan, and 
in many other States. 

I have here gathered accounts of lynchings that have occurred 
in all these States; and whether it occurred in the cold climate of 
New York or Maine, or whether in the cold climate of Minnesota 
or Michigan, whether it occurred in that State from which the 
Presidents have come of late—the State of Ohio—one touch of hu¬ 
manity makes all white men kin. [Applause.] No State or com¬ 
munity is free from lynchings or mob violence when the honor of 
their homes and the virtue of their wives and daughters are as¬ 
saulted. Their homes, their daughters and wives, the neighbors’ 
daughters and wives and their virtue are to be sacred and not to 
be subjected to criticism because you can not find a cold law that 
will bridle and check the hot temper of fathers and brothers, 
whether they live in Ohio or live in Georgia. 

Another instance which occurred since this Congress has been 
in session. A white lady on her way home was waylaid by a 
colored brute. We do not know whether he committed any 
wrong or outrage except murder. Her throat was cut, her head 
beaten into a jelly, and she was thrown into the river, where her 
body lay until, in the course of nature, decay made it float to the 
top. They found the murderer; they traced it to him; they put 
him in jail in that county, the principal county in the district I 
have the honor to represent, and in a city in the State of Georgia 
tried him on the 19th day of December by a white jury. He was 

defended by my own law partner, appointed by the court, for the 
4567 


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man did not have a dollar in the world—defended ably too, so much 
so as to evoke for the attorneys the thanks of the court and of the 
law-abiding people; and to-day his case is in the Supreme Court, 
where they are exhausting every remedy in his behalf. 

I give you the two cases, one where a white fiend outraged a 
white woman and was lynched by my people, in violation of law, 
if you please, and a negro brute who murdered a white woman 
ten years afterwards, and was tried and convicted by law. I ask 
gentlemen on that side of the House to listen not with censure; 
we ask your sympathy. We know if you had these things exist¬ 
ing in your community you would need curs; and you would get 
it, and not the carping criticism that we received at the hands of 
the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Linney]. [Applause.] 

Now, Mr. Chairman, I have a number of instances of lynchings 
in States other than the South which I will not quote, because it 
will do no good or serve no good purpose; but I want to say this: 
The South has had great trials and tribulations. We helped 
found, organize, and build up this great country. Our people in 
every war from the Revolution down have sought with arms, 
with their treasure, and her sons to uphold the liberty of our 
people and the banner of our country. It has been declared by 
the President of the United States, himself a Federal soldier, that 
the time had come when these animosities, thank God, should 
be banished forever in the graves of our soldiers who fought to¬ 
gether at San Juan and various places where we battled with the 
foreign foe. But, Mr. Speaker, if all this does not prove to you, 
if what our representative men state and the facts do not bear 
out what I have said, if this does not convince you that wo are 
determined to solve this terrible problem which is put upon us in 
God's own time to suit our judgment, our duty to God and man 
and our families and to this great Government, we can not help it. 

To those who extend to us the sympathy, forbearance, and pa¬ 
tience that we may be entitled to by reason of the condition of affairs 
that places upon us these great problems for our solution, we thank 
you. To those who believe what the gentleman from North Caro¬ 
lina has said, that we are vicious violators of the law, that we 
maintain our supremacy of law and order by vicious election 

methods and by violation of the law, we have to say we leave 

451)7 



15 


you, we leave him, to the calm indifference of our contempt. [Ax>- 
plause.] 

Mr. LINNEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the gentle¬ 
man a question. 

The CHAIRMAN, The gentleman from Georgia has but one 
minute left. 

Mr. LINNEY. I was not present during his criticisms of me, 
and I want to ask him a question. Will he tell the House why it 
is that in the State of Texas, a Southern State, where there are 
probably as many negroes as there are in Georgia, that there are 
no lyncliings, and about 95 per cent of the electors in that State 
cast their vote every year, when so few cast votes in Georgia? 
Now, I want that as a matter of information, without getting 
mad. [Laughter.] Do not get mad as you do in election pre¬ 
cincts, but state it philosophically. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Oh, the gentleman from North Carolina is 
putting on the cap and bells again to play before the House. I 
have here a list of the lynchings in Georgia and Texas. In Georgia 

there are 11, and Texas has 7. 

4567 


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